System management
Home The main tasks of a system manager is to create and maintain a network that is both secure and efficient. They must make sure that they are always configuring the network to suit the needs of the network users and the applications being runned on the network. This is key as If the network is not set up/configured properly then users may run into issues and the network may run a lot slower than it should. As Well as being in charge of the network and making sure its functional the system manager should also be on hand to lend technical support to anybody that needs it. This may be their employer or other employee’s. If it is a large company or organisation then the system manager will want to set up a ticketing system which will make it easier to help many people in a short amount of time. I’ve already mention this though on another page so I won’t go into detail. The system manager will also be in charged of managing and creating user accounts. This is a big responsibility as it requires them to handle sensitive data such as the users data and their password for their account. Creating users will normally be done for any new employees that the company hires, Most of the time the system manager will already have a load of accounts already made and set up so that all they have to do is assign it to the new employee and let them choose a password. The password preference is also a thing that the system manager does, this is when he/she chooses what the password should include such as a capital letter or a certain amount of characters and numbers. This is important to set up as you don’t want employees using very simple passwords because this would pose a security risk to the network and the company. As Well as creating the accounts and managing them the system manager will have to set up access levels and apply them to each account created. The access levels they will want to set up are one that has permission to change and access everything, this would be used by the system manager or other members within the department. Next they will have another that grants access to view and edit all files on the computer network and this will be mostly used by the managers or directors or just high ranking members of staff. Finally there will be one that can only edit files it creates and has limited access to viewing certain files, this one will be used by the majority of the low level/ basic staff members. The system manager and anyone with the same privileges will also be able to monitor the other staff to make sure they are following the security policy and aren't doing anything malicious or against company policy. Using certain softwares they will also be able to track which employees log on to certain computers, using this they can make sure that no one is logging onto a computer they should not or trying to access someone’s files. Fault finding is another task that the system manager must do, fault finding consist of finding errors in the system or the organisation itself and correcting them. For example a fault could be that a certain user can’t access their files, the system manager would then find and solve the issue and the user would go back to normal. To make their job easier what most system managers will do is create a fault database, this will contain every past fault and how to fix them so when a fault arises they can check there first for an quick answer. But if the fix in the database does not work then it will be their job to find a new fix to the fault and update the database. Setting up backups is another important task for the system manager. They will first need to decide what kind of back up they want to do as there are 3 main backup types. The first one is a full backup, this is just backing up every bit of data that is currently on the drive. Next there is the incremental backup, this is where only the data that has been modified will be backed up. Finally there is the Differential backup, this is where is will backup all the data that has been changed or created up to the last full backup. In a medium or large company with lots of data the backups shouldn't be done manually, they should be set up so that they are automated and will backup whenever they have been set to. Security procedures Sometimes IT system managers also have to conduct security procedures, such as scanning systems using an antivirus, configuring firewalls to ensure that malicious sites are blocked. Checking peoples access control is another one as the system manager will want to make it so they can only access what they are allowed to. Configuring security policies is an important task as it will include writing up a network code of practice which is a set of rules that everyone in the organisation must follow, although this may vary depending on the staff as the more senior staff will have different policy depending on what kind of access they have to data and security procedures. Other security procedures that will have to be carried out are things like managing security patches and keeping security software up to date as this will carry on keeping the network/organisation safe. To keep the users happy and working effectively the system manager will have to manage software on the company's pc will have to be checked and updated when required. The system manager will have to deal with License management as well, this is where they must make sure that all their licenses they are signed up for are good as in they have no flaws or anything bad about them. A bad thing to find in a license may be something like the company lending to software will not be held responsible for any corruptions in the software and will not help in anyway. centralised software rollout is where instead of having software installed on each pc,the software is stored and runned from the server. The benefit of this is you won’t have to go to each pc and update the software instead you just update the one software on the server. The negative to this thought is that it cannot be used whilst in offline mode. Drive management Disk imaging is basically just the same as backing up a hard drive except instead of it just copying every single file, it will just take an image of the data. Using this image and another hard drive you can rebuild all the data that was on the image. The good thing about backing up this way is it takes up a lot less room on the hard drive meaning you can fit multiple backups onto one drive.It's also a lot quicker. Drive mapping is assigning a drive letter to a shared storage area on the computer network and this drive can be accessed anywhere in the network although this only applies for computers using windows as it is different on other Os's such as Linux and IOS. Network management, IP(internet protocol) and address management are all things that should be implemented as using these three things users can easily send files from one pc on the network to another using the computer IP addresses. A piece of software can be used to make this job easier. It will also make tracking each PC and what they are sending to each other easier.